Rising to the Occasion

Rising to the Occasion
by SvenSvenson
©2012

Disclaimer:  balloony, inflatable themes herein - for mature audiences only.

****************************************************************************

Here's something interesting I've noticed lately:

Most folks who find themselves blowing up like a helium balloon don't quite appreciate the humor in it.  Oddly enough, though, some seem to like it.  And of those, a small subset seem to really like it. 

Whatever.  I think it's a hoot. 

***

It was a flash of brilliance, I must say.  But the idea needed a lot of development and a lot of resources to become reality - three long years of development on the sly, to be more precise.  And resources - gawddamn, it ate up some fucking cash (not that money was much of an obstacle).  See, I've got access to a bunch of really cool gadgets and gizmos at work, ya' know?  Super secret stuff that Uncle Sugar has no problem dropping a few hundred billion on.  And, no, I didn't steal anything.  I'm a hard worker and I make up for the tiny amount of extracurricular time by applying my genius to the patriotic task of keeping you safe and sound, m'kay?   I like to think of it more as "just compensation."

I had to be careful.  There were a few close calls in which I was able to tap dance my way out.  But, to be perfectly honest, I think that I could have come right out and told everyone what I was doing and nobody would have believed me.  That's right - ha ha - I'm making an inflation ray gun;  big laugh all around.   Back to work.

And work... oh man, did it work - especially that first real world test.  It took me a week just to screw up the courage for that one. 

For victim number one, I had picked out a hot little barista at the local Starschmucks.  It was a charity case, truth be told.  She was cute as a button but flat as board so I thought I'd help her out a teensy-weensy little bit. 

I went in one day and ordered a coffee, sat down at a corner table with my "laptop", and waited for a customer rush. 

Yes, that's right - laptop. 

It's all a bit more complicated than pulling out a Buck Rogers ray gun and pointing it at someone.  I need to be more inconspicuous than to hold a pistol-shaped thingy in my hands while pointing it at someone and muttering "pew-pew".  Hell, never mind incognito - I could end up getting shot.  Nobody pays any attention to the dude in the corner mooching the free WiFi, however. 

Anyway, the process is straight forward enough.  I just setup close by and make a scan of the local area.  Then, I pick a target, bring their form up on the control window, and make the adjustments with the sliders in the GUI.  Once I have it the way I want, I just click on the "Inflate" button, sit back, and enjoy the show.  The actual device fits neatly inside the laptop cover and the web cam lens makes for a good beam emitter.  It seeks out the target and fires, silently and invisibly.

So, I pull this chick up on the scan, select her boobs, adjust their final shape, and then set the inflation size big enough to pop the buttons on her polo shirt.  The scan said she wasn't wearing a bra, so I figured that it would be a good show.  Oh, and I also clicked the "permanent" radio button in the setup dialog box.  A regular fairy fucking godmother, I am.

I sat there nervously tapping away on my little toy while sipping criminally priced, hot burnt water.  Occasionally, I would look up to see if things were busy and once there was enough activity at the counter, I clicked on "inflate".  Even with the rate set to medium-slow,  I saw two little bulges pop up under the stretchy knit shirt right away.   I knew it was coming, but she was blissfully unaware and didn't notice anything.  After a few moments, the guy at the head of the line did, though.  The dude stood there wide eyed and mute for a moment before bringing it to her attention.   I think he said something like "uh, your shirt" and motioned at her chest.

Everybody standing in line then went silent, unsure of their lying eyes.  The other baristas stopped in their tracks, too, also staring.  In the momentary silence, you could hear the helium hissing away.  She looked down and made a startled double take at her ballooning tits as they strained against the fabric.  I could hear strands of fiber starting to pop softly as pneumatic cleavage swelled beneath the widening gap of her collar.  As the seams of the shirt traced the expanding curves of her bust and strained under the mounting pressure, she just gazed down slack-jawed while she inflated.

I moved the rate slider up a bit and clicked on the "Inflate" button again.

There was an audible surge.  A moment later, the topmost button on her shirt popped off and flew across the room in a high arc, dancing on a table top before dropping to the floor.  Everybody flinched.  Her tits were massive now, shaped by the restraining fabric that squeezed her milky cleavage up out of the neckline. 

The second button popped off.  Another round of flinching shot around the room, this time with an accompaniment of gasps.  Her boobs bounced, still restrained by the rendering shirt.  She looked like someone was blowing up two party balloons on her chest.  The destruction of the shirt accelerated in a series of soft pop-pop-pops.

When the inflation slowed to a stop she just stood there, frozen and staring down at her balloon tits.  The room found the sight equally astounding and she looked up from her down turned brow as her eyes darted from patron to patron, only to be met with open-mouthed astonishment.

After a long moment, the last button finally popped off, flying across the room and hitting the window on the other side.  Everybody jumped.

That was about six months ago.  The last I heard, she was posing for cheesecake photos and making bundles of cash. 

You're welcome, sweetie.

***

Hell, I've even tried it on myself - gotta test this stuff out first.  One of the first macros I developed made it so that I had a gigantic balloon cock and balls, heh-heh.  Little blue pill, eat your heart out.  It made it kinda difficult to balance and walk upright around the house, though.  And, yeah, I gave into curiosity a few times.  I've always wondered what it would be like to have big balloon tits, myself.  I've blown them up like beach balls and I even tried out the hyper hourglass program for the first time, too - floated right on up to the ceiling.  Ha!  Kinda' fun. 

What? 

Don't look at me like that.  You damn well know you'd do it too.  

All I'm going to say is that I do that stuff sparingly.  Otherwise, I'd spend the whole rest of the day feeling myself up.

Since that spectacular public debut I've done dozens of one-offs, but I've had to be very careful to avoid creating any kind of a pattern or inflating people so often that it attracted undue attention in the legitimate media.  One here, wait a while, and then another one there - always with plausible denial.  It was a fun little gig.

That was, until last week.  That's when I screwed up a and let my temper get the best of me.

I was leaving the mall and walking out to my car when I saw this bottle blonde cougar bitch park her big ass fucking SUV next to my car and slam the hell out my fender with her door as she got out.  Being close enough to witness the whole thing, I yelled at her.  The beyotch kept yammering away on her cell phone and walked right past me in her muffin top and bejeweled sweat pant bottoms like I wasn't even there.  Dammit, I was pissed-off.

So, I jumped in my car and pulled out the inflato-ray from its backpack lying on the floor.  It took a moment to boot and I made a frantic scan once it did.  She was almost out of range and there wasn't enough time for a proper setup, so I haphazardly clicked on one of the pre-set routines.  

Apparently, I hit the "Weather Balloon" one.  Heh - hadn't tested that one yet.

I watched as she stopped in her tracks and screamed.  Immediately, her arms popped out straight from her sides, making her drop her phone and obnoxious handbag.  Other shoppers in the parking lot stopped and turned towards the cry - one guy even ran towards her.  From behind, I could see her sides rapidly swell, followed by her limbs.  She was swelling so fast that even from behind I could see her pants and top sliding off and you could see her inflating boobs pop out of her ripped top as her crotch swelled towards the ground.  The helium rushing into her from fifty yards away was loud enough to be heard inside my car.  It sounded like a parade balloon being blown up.

A few moments later, her garments were ripped to shreds and she was almost spherical.  What were once her shoulders rode up around her ears and soon her hands and feet were nothing but dimples in her expanding flesh.  Everybody stood there, silently in awe as she rose off the ground and quickly floated away while screaming in a high-pitched helium voice.  Hell, I was a little dumbfounded myself.

They found her about sixty miles away holding onto a street light for dear life, slowly deflating.

Unfortunately, several camera phone pictures and videos made it to the local news that evening and I'm pretty sure the whole thing was caught on the mall security cameras.

Fuck.

It was time to lie low, so I decided to head south of the border and sip frozen alcoholic drinks on the beach for a few weeks.  I had the vacation time coming, anyway.

What a mistake that turned out to be.

******

In retrospect, maybe I should have gone easier on the tequila.  But, what the hell - I was on vacation.

A few days in, I found myself relaxing in a beach chair while wearing a Hawaiian shirt and straw hat with my "laptop" and having a little fun enhancing the girls who were sunning themselves and playing in the surf.  I would pick one out, set the inflation rate to very slowly blow up their boobs or ass (or both), and then watch to see what happened. 

Can you believe it?  Nobody fucking noticed.  That is, except for this one really hot red-haired chick.  It was funny watching her suddenly get really uncomfortable and try to cover herself up with a towel, as if it would be possible to be any more self-conscious while wearing a string bikini.  When she bouncy-bounced past me running for her hotel room in a panic, I pretended to be napping under my beach umbrella.  Then, after she went by, I adjusted the slider to suddenly double the size of her tits and clicked on the 'Inflate' button.   I heard her shriek echo around the pool courtyard as she bounced along.

Heh.  I'm an asshole.

"Senorita - favor, uno mas margarita!"  Damn, those things rocked.

***

Later that same evening, there was to be a beachwear fashion/hot-chicks-on-parade show.  As the sun was going down, I stumbled over to a choice seat at the beach cabana bar and enjoyed a tuna steak, yet another margarita, and continued playing with my little toy.  As the crowd began to gather, I randomly selected girls downing drinks and gave little helium puffs to their butts or tits with each sip they took.  Ha - they were all too tipsy or outright drunk to notice.  Geez, what would I have do to get a reaction?

After dark, the bamboo stage lit up and the PA system came alive with annoying frat rock.  A smarmy sounding DJ took the stage and began to shamelessly plug the sponsoring beer company.  The crowd pressed in closer as a representative from the sponsor brought out the mascot used for their latest advertising campaign - an annoying little English terrier they had dubbed "Suds Macbrewski, the party K9". 

"Senorita - favor, uno margarita!" I slurred out again.  There's nothing like a little frozen liquid courage to set the mood.

First up was to be a wet t-shirt competition.  Oh yeah, this was going to be fun.  From stage right, a buxom gaggle of young hotties walked out and stood, each sporting an "I-can't-believe-I'm-doing-this" grin on their face and a white t-shirt on their torso.  And, what was this?  Was that Miss Red-Haired Bouncy-Bounce from earlier in the day on the right?  Holy crap, it was!  Pneumatic and perky - damn, I did some fine work.  And, man, was she strutting her newfound stuff, or what?

As the DJ droned on, an uninhibited spark of an idea flashed in my head.  Oh, yeah, this was going to be good.

"Shenoreeta - favor, marg-rita!"

Between slurps of salty sweet drink, I tapped away on my laptop as furiously as my numbing fingers would go.  Back up on stage, two flunkies with buckets of water flanked the hotties as the DJ emcee flapped his gums and the music pumped out of the sound system.  With a word from the Mr. Smarmy Microphone, the flunkies proceeded to splash each of the jiggling ladies with a bucket of water.  The crowd went wild.

I clicked on the "Inflate" button.

Instantly, the contestants' boobs began swelling under their now semi-transparent cotton garments.  I had set the inflation rate fast enough so that everyone would immediately notice.  Each of the women felt themselves swelling and looked down at their chests with mouths agape.  Some clutched their ballooning tits and some covered their mouths to stifle yelps.  Miss Bouncy's reaction was best of all, though.  She just smiled defiantly with her arms akimbo and thrust out her expanding chest for the crowd to ogle.

The alcohol-fueled mass went even wilder than before.  The men whooped and hollered and the women laughed and screamed in amusement.  That's when the damn beer dog jumped out of its handler's arms, ran across the stage, and then jumped into the crowd, handler in pursuit.  The crowd loved it.

The other contestants took note of the reaction given to Miss Bouncy Red and, one-by-one, stepped forward with out-thrust chests as their instinctive jealously took over.  The DJ, not quite knowing how to react to the spectacle before him, decided to just go with the flow.  "Looks like we've got a little competition going on here!  Guys, whaddaya say??"

The response from the crowd was deafening. 

I tapped away a little more and then hit "Inflate" again.  The women on stage hesitantly stood their ground as their chests began to rapidly inflate to gargantuan proportions.  I had given Bouncy a little extra kick and she stepped a pace forward as her cleavage began pressing through the neckline.  All over the crowd, cell phones were held high as hundreds of videos began recording.

That last margarita was taking its toll and the world seemed to go numb amid the roaring crowd.  But still, I pressed on.  It took a few moments of processing time, but I isolated all of the men in the crowd and pulled up a routine from the menu I'd been working on and then hit "Inflate" again.  Slowly but surely, they all would soon notice themselves getting a little overly excited.  While still rowdy, there was a noticeable change in the crowd's hollering as a slow murmur and laughter began to rise.

I pulled up the hypervoluptuizer menu and again selected the women on stage.  Now, in addition to their growing chests, their hips and thighs ballooned and I could tell that all of them were getting light on their feet.  With the burgeoning boners momentarily forgotten, the crowd's cheers swelled again.  Trying his best to jump out in front of the parade, the DJ played it off as if it was all part of the act.  People walking by on the beachside street took notice and began to filter in, delighted with what they saw.

"Mas mar-ita, fa-vor" I called out.

The still inflating women on stage each jockeyed for postion, playing for cheers and being rewarded for their efforts.  As they moved about on stage, I could see some of them go up on their tippy toes as their increasing buoyancy momentarily took hold. The ones that noticed began to look worried and would unconsciously hold their arms slightly out to the sides to help balance themselves.  Miss Bouncy Red seemed to delight in this and I could see her testing the lift she was feeling.

Heh, heh - I decided that it was time for the ladies in the crowd to participate.  My hands and fingers typed away again at the keyboard, seemingly distant and not under my control.  It was awesome.

Like before with the men, the women in the crowd were each isolated in the target window - so many that the entire area map glowed.  I made the adjustments I wanted and again hit "Inflate".  A chorus of feminine shrieks rose up from the mass of humanity as several thousand pairs of boobs began inflating like big bouncing helium balloons.  It was difficult to see into the center of the crowd, but if the women nearest to me were at all representative of the collective reaction, I'd say that I hit my target perfectly. 

All the women around me were clutching their ballooning bosoms as buttons popped off blouses and bikini tops and brassieres rendered themselves.  An all-encompassing hiss emanated from the crowd.  Shrieking turned to laughter as the inflation slowed to a halt.  Depending on their level of inebriation, the women were either offended at the stares and gropes from the men around them or laughed it off and shook their new endowments for their fellow audience members.

I finished the remainder of my last margarita with a gulp and then again turned my attention back to my laptop.  "Enough fucking around" I drunkenly thought to myself.  "Time to get shherious."  Being the artist that I am, I figured that what this little drama needed was a satisfying finale.  So, going into the "recent" menu, I pulled up the weather balloon routine that I had used on that bitch back at the mall.  Dragging and dropping it over to the action field on the GUI, I then brought up the locator map and set it to "radius", with a 200-meter value.  Even in my exquisitely drunken state, I hesitated for a moment. 

"Did I really want to do this?"  I asked myself.

"Fuck it." 

I clicked on the "Inflate" button one last time.

For a moment, the screen on the laptop froze.  Then, it dropped out into black and returned with a processing status bar.  The overload icon in the application control panel flashed and I felt the bottom of the case warm up as the unit crunched the numbers.  When the processing finished, the cooling fan kicked into high speed.  The "executing" icon soon flashed but nothing happened at first.  Soon, a loud hiss rose above the cacophony of the DJ, the sound system, and the agitated crowd. 

Up on stage, the women all let go of their bouncing pneumatic bazooms and grabbed their bellies, as did the DJ.  The people around me did the same while a mixture of shrieking, gasping, and laughter spilled out of the huge crowd.  Out on the street, cars, bicycles, and pedestrians all stopped in their tracks.  Bellies, boobs, butts, and thighs all around me were rapidly inflating into straining clothing.

Miss Bouncy's face lit up and as she swelled her hands explored her expanding form.  I could see that her skin took on the elastic shine that the process encumbered.  By that point, all of the women up on stage had lost their bikini bottoms and the popped garments lay on the ground at their feet.  As the bevy of ballooning bimbos shrieked and rounded out, one of the petite ones began to rise into the night air.  She still had one of her high heels clinging to her expanding foot, while the other one was left behind on the stage with a snapped strap.  The gentle breeze began to push her out over the crowd and toward the shoreline boulevard.  On her face was a mixture of alarm and astonishment as she slowly rose.   With a pop, her other high-heeled shoe fell off onto the inflating people below her.

The crowd didn't seem to notice, since they themselves were similarly occupied.  What began as wild amusement with the situation soon turned into amused, wild panic.   Throughout, sibilant hissing, popping and rendering of garments, squeaking skin, and high-pitched shrieking emanated. 

The waitress who had been serving me stood next to the bar, angrily yelling Spanish curses at the impossible situation she found herself in.  Her ballooning bosom had pushed out of her halter top and was weightlessly bobbling over a ballooning belly.  As she looked around in panic, she locked her focus onto me - the only person out of the thousands surrounding her who was still normal. 

"AIYYEEE!" she screamed as she began to furiously waddle in my direction, murderous thoughts of vengeance escaping onto her face and into her balled fists.  I drunkenly smiled at her and then turned my wobbly attention to my laptop.  As she struggled to reach me on her increasingly light feet, I tapped away.  When she was almost within arms reach, I hit the "inflate" button and she stopped.  Her eyes went wide as her limbs immediately stuck straight out, expanding.  Her ballooning body hissed even more loudly as her swelling accelerated. As her inflating belly peeled her ripped short-shorts off over ballooning thighs, her shoulders pushed up around her jaw and ears.  Behind, an expanding back began to merge with her huge, pneumatic ass as she rounded out.  Her ripped clothing fell to her feet in heaps.

As her inflating crotch and thighs merged, her wide-eyed stare again focused on me.  Her rounding form bounced slightly on the cabana bar floor and soon she was on her way upward.  In a squeaky voice, she hurled more of those energetic Spanish curses my way and I watched as she rose into the air, slowly turning over and over.  Soon, she would be almost spherical.

Down in the crowd, space was becoming a premium.  Ballooning men and women were rounding out and pushing into each other, squeaking away as they did.  At the fringes of the crowd, pneumatic audience members were pushed along the sandy beach as the group expanded en masse.  Out in the street, car drivers and passengers had unbuckled themselves and were standing near their vehicles as they ballooned outward.

Back up on front, several more of the contestants had buoyantly departed for the night sky and I could see their rounded forms rising in the light from below.  Miss bouncy, meanwhile, was the last gal standing.   Ecstatic, she was nearing fully spherical and I could see that she was near lift-off.  As the light breeze lazily pushed her off the edge of the stage, her shiny balloon body dipped slightly, leveled off, and then began to rise.  Over the din of the crowd, I could hear her scream "WOO-HOO!" in a high helium voice.  She skimmed along and above the crowd, then rising and making her way across the street and above the low-rise hotels until I couldn't see her anymore.

Down below, there was decidedly less enthusiasm.  With the departure of Miss Bouncy, the stage was empty, since all of the women in the competition had floated off - after all, they'd had a head start on everyone else.  Here and there in the crowd, I could see some of the smaller people pop up with "foomping" sounds as they were squeezed together.  Amazingly, there was still quite a bit of laughter amongst the new balloons.  Out in the street, one of the women caught in the balloon ray began to rise.  Not only was she completely round, but her boobs had managed to remain distinct from the rest of her inflated body.  Leading the way up, they were each almost half as large as the rest of her.  I took a mental note to check that out later.

One-by-one, some of the smaller (well, originally smaller) individuals started to rise into the night air and drift off over the boulevard.  The onsies-twosies soon turned into dozens.  When this happened, a further panic in the crowd rose along with them.  There was still quite a bit of boisterous laughter, though.  To this, I attributed what was likely the massive intake of alcohol everyone had been enjoying prior.  Before long, everyone who had been hit with the ray was rising;  several thousand naked balloony tourists and locals floating into the air at once, like a release at a sporting event.  Heh - sporting for me at least.  With his departure, thankfully, there was no more idiotic narration from the DJ. The PA system still pumped out annoying tunes on it's pre-programmed schedule, however, giving the whole scene a soundtrack of sorts. 

The raucous cloud of the newly ballooned rose into the air and drifted by and overhead where I sat.  Their supernatant bodies rebounded off of each other, drumming hollowly with every bouncy collision.  Here and there, I could hear a helium-voice "OOF! Sorry!" and other such apologies as they bumped into each other.  I caught several people floating above looking intently down at me as I sat in the cabana bar, all innocence-and-sweetness as if nothing had happened.  To each I drunkenly tipped my hat, which elicited sneers - or at least eyes widening at the epiphany of just what-the-hell was happening to them. 

There was this one girl, though - a cute blonde whose tits I could still make out as mounds bulging out from her massively inflated body.  She was almost fully rounded, otherwise, and her head, hands, and feet were starting to dimple her tanned, ballooning body.  With tightly closed eyes, she wore a furrowed brow and a deep, satisfied smile.  She floated by within a few feet of me and I reached out and grabbed her plumping hand.  Startled, her eyes opened wide and she regarded me with nervousness.  Other people-balloons bounced off of and around her, pushed inland by the breeze.  I drew her close and kissed her.

"You like, eh?"  I asked. 

She shook her head in an emphatic "yes" gesture as best as her bloated shoulders let her. 

"Go have fun, then"  I counseled.  Pulling her further down, I gently held her puffing cheeks in my hands and then I gave her a passionate kiss.  She closed her eyes with a flutter and returned it with equal passion.  Then, I let her go and she smiled at me as she rose into the cloud of balloonies, tumbling slowly into the darkness. 

Heh - anytime, honey.

***

"Ohhhh, fuuuuuck, my head hurts" I croaked as I awoke.

The sun pierced the fluttering gap in my hotel room curtains.  As I slowly opened my blooshot eyes, my pupils pinpointed and my temples exploded in the unforgettable pain of a tequila hangover.  From my fog, I began to remember the night before.  "Oh, shit" I muttered at the dresser drawer as I rubbed the bridge of my nose while propping myself up in bed on my elbows.

Above the roar of the window air conditioning unit, I could hear a great deal of activity outside my room.  Icy knives shot through my head as I got up and stumbled over to the window, squinting from the intense light.  Down below, I could see the courtyard pool of my hotel.  Across the street was the beach and the stage where last night's show was held.  My heart jumped into my throat as the pit of my stomach dropped through the floor.  The beach looked like it had been hit with a tsunami.  Police and television news crews strode about frantically, looking for answers in the thousands of piles of torn garments littering the sand.  Police vehicles raced along the boulevard with sirens blaring.  Helicopters circled above.

"SHIT!"  I screamed, violently pulling the curtains closed.

I fumbled for the television remote on the nightstand and pressed the ON button.  Flipping through the mixture of Spanish and English language channels, I finally stopped on a news report from a national cable channel.  As a Spanish voiceover spoke frantically, a looped tape of the developing story played; moving images of what looked like thousands of flesh-colored balloons floated high through the air.  I kept hearing the word "globos" being uttered.  Some of the video was of the amateur eyewitness type and some was from professional news crews.  There were several clips obviously taken from the air and even some gripping pictures of mid-air rescue attempts.  Some were of naked ballooned people hanging onto trees, chimneys, and lamp posts while people on the ground frantically tried to reach them with ropes, makeshift ladders, and poles. 

Then, recovered video from from down in the crowd during the show was played. It was taken from just below the stage on the left and was a shaky and difficult to follow.  In the background could be heard the bass of heavy rock music pumping from the sound system.  The contestants were brightly lit by the stage lighting and you could see that the hypervoluptuizer routine had just been activated. Everyone around the phone-cam owner whooped and hollered in delight.  There was a jump cut in the video and then you could hear the shrieks as the women in the audience were hit with the inflatoray.  The phone-cam's owner turned it around and pointed it at herself and her inebriated friends.  They were all squealing with laughter as they pointed to and prodded each other's expanding bust lines.  After another jump cut, there was a glimpse of the drunken friends as their bellies ballooned outward - the video stopped there.  Several more similar clips were shown and then the presenter breathlessly segued into another clip - this time showing security video of the cougar bitch from the mall. 

Ohfuckohfuckohfuck....OHFUUUUCK!

I panicked.

Still dressed in yesterday's clothes and sporting a day's worth of stubble, I threw on another shirt over top the smelly one I already wore, picked up as many of my belongings off the floor as I could, and stuffed them in the backpack with the inflato-ray.   Sporting sunglasses, I quietly made my way down the hall past the elevator.  As I opened the door to the stairs, the bell on the lift chimed and I quickly and quietly closed the heavy door behind me.  As I descended, from above I could hear shouting men heading down the hall, presumably to my room. 

Heart racing and head pounding, I made my way to the bottom of the stairwell.  It opened to a small foyer off the main lobby and I quietly slipped through it while trying to make myself as small and unnoticed as possible in the now teeming lobby.  An cabal of international television news crews was interviewing anyone they could.  A side hallway veered off to a lesser-used exit and I followed it, looking over my shoulder to see if I was being followed.  Around the last corner and within feet of the door, I came to a startled halt. 

Standing at the glass door was an man in a neat business suit, but crumpled as if he had just spent a couple days traveling in it.  He held an expensive briefcase in one hand.  When he saw me, he looked up and smiled.  "Mr. Smith, I presume?"

I damn near browned my drawers when I heard my name.  I stood there for a moment, frozen.

"If you want to remain a free man, I suggest you come with me." said the gentleman.  He then reached into his coat and pulled out a business card.  I hesitated in reaching for it, so he insistently flicked his wrist, indicating that I should take it without delay.

Slowly I reached out and accepted it, then looked down to inspect it.  It was plain white with plain Arial script and all it had printed on it was the name of a business of which I had never heard and a first name.

"What the hell?" I asked, impolitely.

"Sir, now, if you don't mind - there is very little time" he urged.

I looked up, dazed, then followed him outside to an awaiting taxi cab.

The card?  All it said was:

Hubble Research Group

Jack